Conservative Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said that in America today if you do not support homosexual marriage, “you are labeled a homophobe and a hater,” and that the next step in that strategy is “to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity” constitute “hate speech.”
"We are at the water's edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech,” said Senator Rubio in a May 26 interview with CBN News.
“Because today we've reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage you are labeled a homophobe and a hater,” he said, adding, “so what's the next step after that?"
"After they are done going after individuals, the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of the Catholic Church, is hate speech and that's a real and present danger,” said Rubio.
Earlier in the interview, Rubio explained the importance of the traditional family.
"The family is the original cell of society," the senator told CBN News. "It is the first and most important government. It is the first church. The family is the singular most important institution in society. It existed before government. It existed before laws."
Rubio also explained that although he was reared a Catholic, he drifted into Mormonism for a while and then he and his wife, Jeanette, attended a Baptist church for a number of years.
He said the more he learned about the Bible, the more it pushed him back to the Catholic Church, and that while he is now a practicing Catholic, he has a “tremendous appreciation for” Christians in other denominations and often interacts with “our brothers and sisters in Christ who attend other denominations.”
Rubio’s parents left Cuba in 1956 and became U.S. citizens in 1975. Marco Rubio was born in Miami, Fla., in May 1971. He and his wife have four children. Rubio served in the Florida House of Representatives for nine years and was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2010.